Fraud Warning

WARNING ABOUT FRAUD AND CYBERCRIME

1. Fraud, including, and especially, cyber-crime, is on the increase worldwide. In common with many businesses, including a large number of other law firms, the name of this firm and the names of individual lawyers who work for this firm have on occasions been used by criminals without our knowledge or permission in an apparent attempt to carry out scams and frauds targeted at members of the public worldwide. 
2. Always be alert to and on the look-out for criminal conduct to ensure that you do not become a victim of it. If something looks unusual or suspicious (for example, if it is written in poor English, a business is using a consumer email account like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo, or contact details in a communication do not accord with the publicly available contact information for that organisation) either ignore it and delete it, or proceed with extreme caution and investigate it thoroughly before acting on it. 
3. In particular, always check and verify the identity of, and assess the possible motives of, anyone who contacts you on an unsolicited basis. Remember that a fraudster might be trying to impersonate either someone you know or someone you would normally expect to be on your side (for example, a bank employee, police officer or lawyer, including us). If something sounds too good to be true – a surprise windfall for example – usually it is not true, and often it is a scam. Never hand over money, or disclose personal, financial or security information, unless you are sure you know who you are dealing with and their true intentions towards you. 
4. Fraudsters often use email to perpetrate their frauds and scams, so treat unsolicited email with particular care. Sometimes other forms of communication are also used to initiate a scam, including text, fax, letter, and telephone. Often the initial email or other communication will either: (1) promise the recipient a share of a large sum of money (from a dead person’s estate, an insurance policy, or a lottery win, for example) in return for them first paying a modest sum (an ‘administration fee’ of some description) up front (which is commonly referred to as an ‘advance fee’ fraud); or (2) request personal, financial or security information about the recipient or their bank account allegedly in order to check their account is working correctly or so that non-existent money can be paid in to it (which information they then use to try and access the account by impersonating their victim in an ‘identity theft’ fraud). 
5. Without their knowledge or permission fraudsters sometimes mention in their communications the involvement of a genuine law firm or a genuine lawyer to in an attempt to give legitimacy and credibility to their scam and/or to try and lull their potential victim into a false sense of security. Sometimes fraudsters’ communications will also direct the recipient to a bogus website and/or a bogus social media account that intentionally replicates the look and feel of the website or social media account of a genuine business, bank, or law firm. Such copies (clones) of websites and social media accounts are created without the knowledge or permission of the genuine business and in an attempt to give an legitimacy or respectability to a scam. Never seek to verify the existence or involvement in a transaction of a law firm or lawyer by using contact details contained in an unsolicited communication: always use a public search engine, such as Google, or a reputable online professional directory.
6. We are aware that on occasions the name of this firm, or the names of lawyers who work for it, or clones of the firm’s website, have been used by fraudsters for apparently criminal purposes without our knowledge or permission. Please note that we only practice under the firm name ‘Kingsley Napley LLP’. If you receive a communication which purports to come from, or which mentions, a firm or other business which has a similar but not identical name to us, or which has the same name but different contact details (business address, telephone number, fax number, email address and/or website address) it will not have originated from us or have been sent by us, on our behalf, or with our knowledge or permission. Similarly, our website, and the email addresses we operate, only use the domain name ‘@kingsleynapley.co.uk’. If a website or email address uses a different domain name, including a similar but not identical domain name, and even one that has only one character different, it will not belong to us, and it will be nothing to do with us.  
7. We are also aware that fraudsters sometimes seek to intercept legitimate payments and divert them to their own bank account. They will do this by ‘hacking’ a client’s email account (in particular consumer email accounts like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo) and then changing the bank account details which appear in an otherwise legitimate email that the client sends out or which a genuine person or business has sent to the client in order to divert the payment to their own bank account. This is known as a ‘man in the middle’ fraud. We will never use email to notify you of a change to bank account details which we have already provided to you (in our engagement letter or on the back of our invoices). Any email appearing to come from us which seeks to do this will not be genuine. Do not act on it or reply to it and instead contact us immediately by telephone: do not use email to contact us in case the fraudster has compromised your email account and is monitoring (or tampering with) emails which you send and receive. Please note that we will not accept responsibility if you transfer money into a bank account which does not belong to Kingsley Napley LLP.
8. If you receive an email or other communication purporting to come from Kingsley Napley LLP or from someone holding themselves out as being a member of or agent for Kingsley Napley LLP, or if you are directed to a website or social media account which purports to belong to Kingsley Napley LLP, and you have any suspicions at all about it, before responding to it or taking any action in reliance on it please promptly contact the firm member with whom you normally deal or email enquiries@kingsleynapley.co.uk and we will tell you whether or not the communication came from us or is our website or our social media account. If you have a suspicion or concern about any communication which purports to have come from us, always err on the side of caution and speak to us before acting on it.
9. Our regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, maintains an online ‘Scam Alert’ database which provides members of the public with information about known scams in which the identity of a genuine English law firm or a genuine English lawyer has been used, or is being used, by persons unknown for criminal purposes. The database can be viewed on the SRA’s website (www.sra.org.uk). 
10. You can report frauds and scams which have a United Kingdom element to them to the UK police using the Report Fraud website (www.reportfraud.police.uk). The Report Fraud website also contains information about fraud prevention.